Through the first Antarctic night, 1898-1899

by Frederick Albert Cook

Strait of Magellan, Dec. 2, 1897.

I have now been on the Belgica more than a month, and my admiration for her becomes stronger as we advance toward the southern ice. Her history, her fittings, her equipment, and her men, all serve to enhance this affection, and every day I find in our good ship new points of interest. She has been dressed and redressed so much on this voyage down the Atlantic that the original owners would now hardly recognise her. She has been scraped and polished and painted, and rearranged inside and out, until she looks quite like a pleasure craft. Her new name, Steam Yacht Belgica, now fits her, for her aspect and atmosphere as a greasy, sooty sealer has vanished. The almost inseparable distinction of a sealing craft, the persistent fishy odour, is also gone.

The more we drive her over this lonely sea, the more we fix and comb and dress her, the stronger we feel her quivering animation. She already has a place in our affections as definitely as a pet horse. As she takes us farther and farther away from our homes, we become daily more dependent upon her. And as she pitches and tosses in the unruly seas, and rides out the forbidding storms, we feel we shall love her better. We may have become sentimental about our little pet, but so much depends on her. On the ability of the Belgica to plough through the virgin antarctic ice, depends our success in exploring the prospective new lands. On her hospitality depends our comfort, and on her stability depends, not only the success or failure of the entire expedition, but our future existence, for if she is buried in the antarctic, we cannot hope to survive, we must go with her to an icy grave.

To see the Belgica aright, and appreciate her real value, she should be observed in the polar ice, her natural home. In a cosmopolitan harbour, like Antwerp or Rio de Janeiro, among the larger ships and modern ironclads, she seems like a little bull-dog amid a group of large greyhounds—small, awkward, and ungraceful. In colour the Belgica is gray, with natural wood and cream trimmings. She is bark rigged, and has patent single topsails. Her body is one hundred and ten feet long, twenty-six feet wide, and she has a draft of fifteen feet. In a good wind, without steam, she is able to sail six knots. An auxiliary steam power is placed well aft, that the bow may rise to crush the ice. The boiler is new, and the engine has an effective horse-power of one hundred and fifty. Burning three and a half tons of coal, in Belgian bricks (bricquettes), and with smooth water, the Belgica will make seven knots per hour. But we shall only use her half speed, for with two tons of coal she will make about four knots, a speed quite sufficient amid icebergs, drifting floes, pack-ice, and unknown rocks.

There are many points of special interest in the construction of a modern steam sealer like the Belgica. But to describe all these would lead us into too many long nautical details. In selecting the framework of the bark, timbers were obtained of double the usual size and strength of an ordinary vessel of the same measurement. The stem was inclined, making the bow of an inclination similar to that of a sledge runner, which enables the vessel to rise on to the surface of the ice, and crush it rather by its own weight than by the motive force, as did the older ice-vessels. Otherwise the shape is similar to that of a well-built modern sealing vessel.

The planking inside and outside of the ponderous framework is of extraordinary strength, and over all is a special ice-sheathing of very hard wood. The bow and stern are protected by four-inch planks of greenheart, a tropical wood possessing the remarkable quality of being both hard and elastic. Experience has taught that this wood affords the best protection against the ice destruction. Amidships the wear is less, and here thick oak planks seem to afford the needed security, while it is much lighter and cheaper. The stern wall is five feet thick, and the breast wall about twelve feet in antro-posterior diameter. Outside of this almost indestructible battering ram, there is a protective sheathing of soft Swedish iron, to receive the first cutting edges of the ice.

The rudder is large and specially strong to stand the strain of the crushing ice, while the vessel goes astern into the pack. The helmport is large enough to make it possible to dislodge obstructive ice. The propeller, too, has its special points of interest. It can be raised out of the water, as occasion may require, to free it from ice entanglements, or to replace it with a new one, should it be broken, and also to permit free sailing. And then there is the crow’s nest—a huge barrel raised to the top of the mainmast, to enable the lookout to view a greater horizon. We shall often expect to hear, as I have in the arctic, startling news from the man in this sky-barrel. He will probably announce the first sight of some new lands, and will often send down a signal of our approach to some big animal, which will bring us all on deck armed with rifles, only to find a piece of discoloured ice or snow as a target.

If by any chance the southern ice-floes should hug us too affectionately, we are well prepared for its unwelcome caresses. Our little ship will stand a good deal of hard squeezing; she is constructed to fight not only with her engines and her armoured breast, but in her bowels we have stored something like two thousand pounds of tonite, an explosive said to be superior to dynamite for ice destruction. With this tonite we hope to blast and shatter and find freedom for our Belgica if embraced by the Frost King.

Although we do not expect to hunt seals or whales or anything else for commercial purposes, the expedition is well prepared to take all kinds of life for scientific study. We have boom and harpoon guns to capture whales and sea-elephants. We have rifles, shotguns, pistols, knives, and ammunition to do justice to a pirate ship. Several thousand pounds of alcohol, and a large quantity of chemicals are on hand to preserve animal specimens, and also cotton for stuffing birds, as well as an apparatus for blowing eggs. Our cameras are of all varieties, and with these we expect to photograph the strange antarctic life with its immediate surroundings.

The devices for scientific fishing are as complete as the limited finances would permit. We shall be able to fish on the surface in the middle stratas, and on the bottom of the deep sea. We can even scrape the bed of the ocean with huge dredges for low forms of life, and can drop the thermometer down to register the degrees of heat of the invisible homes of these strange creatures.